ABSTRACT
The chapter titled ‘Zombies and witches and the anxieties of culture’ brings into discussion two of the most popular horror figures in world cinema. While zombies have entered the imagination of the Indian horror narrative only recently, witches too have begun to be promoted from mere sidekicks to full-length discourse not long ago. The zombie narratives of Go Goa Gone (dir. Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K., 2013) and Rise of the Zombie (dir. Luke Kenny and Devaki Singh, 2013) demonstrate apocalyptic imaginings that challenge the routine normativity of the modern Third World capitalist economy and mainstream sexualities. The overlapping of the narratives of the witch protagonist and the female porn star in Ragini MMS 2 (dir. Bhushan Patel, 2014) can be read as attempts to build up a new mythology of witch-hood: where both witches and female porn stars are ‘othered’ because of certain imagined taboo practices, sexual and otherwise. The female witch in Kaalo (dir. Wilson Louis, 2010) becomes the prototype for all barren women who have been branded witches in their lifetime. The chapter concludes that the apocalyptic imaginings of the zombie narratives and the perverse practices of witch-hood branding are strongly indicative of the cultural anxieties translated as sexual and gender politics.
